Teodrose Fikre

Teodrose Fikre is the editor and founder of the Ghion Journal. A published author and prolific writer, a once defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going from a life of upper-middle class privilege to a time spent with the huddled masses taught...

Hotel Americana: They Divide Us; We Conquer Ourselves

Below is the latest Ghion Cast that discusses blueprint of divide and conquer. Make sure to read the article below the video as I lay out the vicious playbook of those who are behind global suffering.

This is a saga of a once free people who were defeated with weaponry and then subdued with chicanery. The first part of the saga witnessed a rebellion as the masses put up a spirited battle to overcome oppression. After decades of systematic repression, eventually the people were quelled with a most diabolical of schemes. What eventually subdued them was factionalism as people who shared the same struggles and felt the same injustices were convinced that their plights were dissimilar and that they were each other’s enemies. Divide and conquer set brother against sister and neighbor upon neighbor until all were eventually made equal through suffering and despair. In a land that could feed the world, the mass majority were put into the yoke of poverty while a few were living a life of high society.

At first glance, the above paragraph seems to describe what is going on in Africa. If that was your assumption, I don’t blame you for making the logical leap to that conclusion. After all, Africa was in fact colonized by malicious foreigners who came in the guise of missionaries as they invaded the continent of man’s birth with a bible in the front hand and guns behind their backs. Induced tribalism created by artificial borders and manufactured countries where none existed is how more than a billion people were eventually put to shackles as their wealth is being siphoned off to this day by gluttonous colonizers. A continent that can feed the world has thus been reduced to the status of beggars and AID recipients.

“For the nation to live, the tribe must die.” ~ Samora Machel

Alas, the first paragraph also describes what has been taking place for a long time and continues to this day right here in America. The same playbook of divide and conquer that was unleashed and perfected in “Africa” has been loosened upon us here in the USA. Induced tribalism and separable grievances are creating friction among the people and leading to civil strife. Though our dissension is nowhere near the levels we witness in places like Libya, Sudan and multiple nations throughout Africa, we too are slow walking down the path of animosity that threatens to break out into a clash of society. As the economic pie gets smaller and smaller, the bottom 99 percent’s ability to keep up with inflation and stay solvent is made more and more impossible. Consequently, more than 50% of Americans have become dependent on the state and the rest are living a life of economic distress. T.I.A.–this is America.

Instead of uniting to take on our common oppressors, we have been conditioned by the establishment and the media-political industry to back bite each other. This is how a fraction of humanity can conquer billions globally. There are not enough guns in the world to subdue everyone through force, so trickery is deployed as the debased (I no longer call them the elites) leverage “us versus them” tactics in order to get co-victims to see each other as enemies. The hardest part has always been creating acrimony and convincing us to resent one another. They figured out an easy way to do this; they turned us into a society of narcissists where too many are busy trying to monopolize pains and looking at the wrongs of this world through self-centered glasses. Instead of saying “I suffer too”, the public rallying cry has been reduced to “I suffer only”. By extension, we are convinced to reject the suffering other people feel and marginalize their pains. In this paradigm where fellow strugglers refuse to join hands, the mood of the public becomes toxic and unity made impossible. Corporate media, soulless politicians and bankrupt actorvists feed flames to the fire as they keep presenting injustices through a one dimensional prism. They do this not because they want to stand up for equality and speak against power; rather they use injustice as a shtick and the suffering of the masses as a business model. Listen to most of the pundits in the mainstream media and the politicians we keep sending to DC to act on our behalf, almost every one of them talk about the iniquities of our nation through narrow partisan and ideological lenses. They don’t stand up for the whole, they only speak to their “base” and then present the “other side” as the problem.

The era of giants like Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Cesar Chavez is long gone, we are now in a paradigm of moral pygmies who are more interested in collecting likes on social media and cashing checks from power than they are in sacrificing and speaking truth to power. In a lot of ways, we are to blame for this, we have become a cult of personalities who only listen to the rich and famous. Ah the rub! The gatekeepers of media and wealth only open the gates for those who sell their souls to the status quo, the ones who defiantly speak against the system of divide and conquer and capital larceny that is hobbling our planet are blackballed from corporate media and ignored by the public. It’s like we are a nation of masochists who are only drawn to the people who abuse us.The establishment gladly complies and feeds our demands; we are bracketed by demagogues who slickly peddle separable grievances and injustices sold through one-sided presentations.

The sheer tragedy and maliciousness of those in power is too much too count. Most of the names I mentioned in the prior paragraph and almost every visionary who tried to stand up for justice and unite the masses was silenced by the authorities in government. I know they indoctrinate children to believe that MLK, JFK and Malcolm were murdered by lone gunmen, but those who have heard of FBI operations like COINTELPRO and the myriad ways our government has silenced one leader after another know that there are bigger hands in play beyond the lone wolves they blame for the death of peaceful messengers. You see, tokens of the system get elevated and praised by corporate media, true agents of change get buried in grassy knolls and Lorraine hotels only for their narratives to be co-opted posthumously by the very people who killed them [read the Confluence of Martin and Malcolm].

Sadly, we go along with the subterfuge of shysters; too many of us would rather snipe at each other and aim sideways at those who suffer just like us instead of aiming up at those who lord over us. If you really pause and reflect, the people on the left and the people on the right–from black to white and all shades of hue and ideology in between–are upset about the same things. We all want a fair shake in life and a shot at a brighter future unencumbered by stress and financial difficulties. Instead of focusing on these common principles and by extension realizing that the source of our burdens are bipartisan policies enacted in the District of Caligula, we waste away as a people fighting about our differences. This is the same theme I discussed in the newest Ghion Cast below–the video below is my audacity of hope on how we can make America great again.This message is not aimed at one group but all irrespective of skin tone, gender,ideology or the myriad of ways we keep getting divided. I ask you to be mindful of the toxicity of tribalism and the dangers of separable grievances. I do not say this to diminish the hurts you or specific groups of people feel nor am I advocating that we overlook the injustices of the past. But we can talk about our hurts without marginalizing the pains other people go through. There is no profit to be had by monopolizing suffering; rather, our pains gain meaning and we mend as a people when we join hands with others and say “me too” instead of saying “only me”. Only a united people can bend the arc of history towards justice; people who are fractured will only be bent by injustice. The times before us are harrowing; there is a reason why the establishment keeps pitting us against each other and why our politics has become poisonous. Either we stop falling for their duplicity or we will find out one day the perils of tribalism as our home America transforms into the next Hotel Rwanda. #HotelAmericana#UniteOrSuffer

The key to our redemption is in our hands; if only we unclench our fists, we can discover the key to liberation in them::

Check out a previous Ghion Cast where I discuss how unity overcame tyranny in Ethiopia, Haiti and America.

I pray for the nation of my birth Ethiopia, the continent that was renamed to “Africa” by colonizers, my new home America and the world as a whole. Our suffering will not last for too much longer.

Teodrose Fikre is the editor and founder of the Ghion Journal. A published author and prolific writer, a once defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going from a life of upper-middle class privilege to a time spent with the huddled masses taught Teodrose a valuable lesson in the essence of togetherness and the need to speak against injustice.

Originally from Ethiopia with roots to Atse Tewodros II, Teodrose is a former community organizer whose writing was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina primary victory speech in 2008. He pivoted away from politics and decided to stand for collective justice after experiencing the reality of the forgotten masses. His writing defies conventional wisdom and challenges readers to look outside the constraints of labels and ideologies that serve to splinter the people. Teodrose uses his pen to give a voice to the voiceless and to speak truth to power.